Skating, Biking and Swimming

I have always believed these 3 activities should be taught before a kid reaches age of 5 yrs, for kids its very easy to learn them as compared to an adult. Kids are born swimmers and they can float in water without putting much efforts. I wanted Ishaan to learn all 3 activities in next 2 years. Teaching requires a lot of patience, we need to be calm and need to accept failures at every stage only then kids get enough space to learn. Being a parent we think of the outcome/result and before enrolling our kids for any lesson we ask the instructors what can we expect and how much time would it take for them to learn the skill. But kids don't think that way, they look at the fun, they don't have any set targets they are just enjoying that moment as much as they can. Think about the life when we were kids we use to enjoy the same way, we rarely cared that we need to pass in exam or finish our homework unless someone told us, we just enjoyed our time with friends in school. The sole reason for going to school was meeting friends and not becoming an engineer or a doctor. So for a person to learn something, it should be full of fun and enjoyment

Skating
Keeping this in mind, and a target to teach these 3 activities to Ishaan in my subconscious mind, I started with Ice skating and enrolled him for lessons. He was the youngest kid in the group, the lessons start at the age of 3 yrs and he was just 3 year. I did inquire about the expectations from the series of 6 lessons and I did understand every kid learns in a different way and he could end these 6 lessons with little gliding, standing and getting up on his own. This was good, anyone who has done ice skating would know how difficult is life after wearing those skates, and once you fall down its a nightmare to get up because the ice is so slippery unless you get some support its very tough. To make this activity fun for Ishaan I discussed with Rohit and he decided to get the lessons for Rishab as well, so that both of them can learn together and enjoy too. Ishaan learned pretty well, after 1st session he was able to getup by himself, he use to fall several times and use to get up again, he was able to march in the ring.
He did 2 sessions of skating this winters and at the end although he was not able to clear the 2nd level exam but was doing good with marching, gliding, running with skates, getting up by himself which is a good progress for his age. I never thought he would be comfortable on ice and would learn so much, he is not waiting for next winters to start next session of skating.

Biking
In spring (April) this year when I took Ishaan for biking, I knew he was not very comfortable and I will have to hold him for biking, but I was surprised to see he wants to do it by himself and was not scared to try. Although I was always close to him, and his bike had training wheels and he would soon get bored of biking and would like to go on slides. I figured out the reason was while biking next to the play area he was always watching kids playing and was tempted to go there and play so his interest in biking was less. Later when we moved to our new house, we tried re-introducing the biking option on one of the weekdays. I found, this time he was comfortable biking and was more interested, it may be because he saw few biking videos on internet and the result was in just a couple of days he was able to bike on his own. He takes circles around the park and does all this on his own while I sit and watch him. He also enjoys biking with me and Neha, he like having a race and he says "Get set go", me and Neha would ride our bikes slow so that he can win. He always says, Daddy we should ride the bike slowly and carefully not fast fast fast. Recently when we went to a park for biking, he was on a slope when his bike went out of control and me and Neha both were on our own bikes, he was scared and was not able to apply the brakes. Fortunately Neha was ahead and was able to catch him, although he still got some scratches, he remembers that incident and says "See I told you, you should not ride fast fast fast"

Swimming

I have been waiting to teach him swimming, when he was 9 months old I decided to teach him floating and found an organization involved with teaching floating for kids under 2 yrs of age but then I was not able to implement that idea. To give him formal swimming training he should at least be 3 yrs, this year I was sure I will enroll him to a class and will take him for swimming with me to the community pool. I know Ishaan likes water but I was not sure he would be comfortable with going into the pool. His swim lessons had one instructor per child which is good and I found Ishaan was very comfortable with his instructor on the first day itself. For his regular practice I use to take him to our community pool, at the end of 1st session (6 classes) he was very comfortable with water and could now jump in water, use hand supporters to float, can kick and move ahead in water, can hold his nose and go into the water. He is trying to move his hands to swim but will take some more time to do this. I was surprised by the progress in just 3 weeks and am hopeful he would be able to be in water on his own without any floating support in next 2 months.